The Sector 3 detention nub was a dusty little pimple of a building in the center of a ring of tall fencing. Dim lights were shining up at it from the ground. The fence wasn’t going to give me any problem—I was pretty sure I’d be able to vault it with my low-gravity superpowers. Then it was about a hundred feet to the edge of the dome. I couldn’t see a way in from where I was standing.
Actually, the fence looked so easy that it made me a little suspicious. How secure could any prison be when every Boov had a flying scooter and a gun that could make holes in anything? I squinted into the darkness and looked around, but there didn’t seem to be anyone patrolling the grounds. It was a really small prison; J.Lo was probably the only one in there. Maybe Boov just did what they were told. Maybe Boov just stayed where they were put.
I wanted something to throw over the fence, just to see what would happen. I wished I had a racquetball.
“Oh!” I whispered to Bill. “Shoot a bubble over there!”
YES.
Bill rose to just above the level of the fence, turned, and launched a bubble inside the perimeter. It slowed once it was about thirty feet in, then drifted lazily on the ammonia-scented breeze. Nothing. No other movement inside the fence.
“Shoot another one,” I said. “Shoot a big bunch.”
Bill made an arrangement like a clump of grapes and snapped at it with his antennae, and it sailed over the compound like a parade balloon.
“You’d think someone in there would tell us to keep our bubbles out of his yard,” I whispered.
“I would,” said the Chief, who’d just joined me at the fence. “If it was my yard.”
“You would, wouldn’t you,” I said. “You’d grab the bubbles and be all like, ‘These are my bubbles now. You’re not gettin’ ’em back.’”
The Chief nodded slowly. “The Spook in there?”
“Yeah,” I sighed, and stared through the bars. “I’m scared for him.”
“So what’s the plan?”
“No plan,” I said. “Did I have a plan when I saved the whole world? Not much of one, anyway.”
We were quiet a moment. Which is to say that I was quiet and the Chief was a figment of my imagination.
“I’ve decided you were wrong before,” I told him after a while.
“Oh, good.”
“It isn’t just kids who go about everything wrong. It’s people. I mean, I don’t want to offend you or anything—”
“Ha! Since when?”
“—but you weren’t exactly the most popular guy back at the casino. Or in Roswell. People thought you were...hard to get along with. Some people. And you are no kid, pardon me for saying so; you’re like two hundred and fifty years old, so shouldn’t you know by now how to make everybody like you?”
“Ah, you put your finger right on it. I could no longer give two horse apples what people think of me. That’s what maturity’s good for. Might be the only thing it’s good for.”
He paused to cough.
“The curse of immaturity,” he said, “is that the more immature you are the more desperate you are to impress others. An’ the less likely you are to do the right thing, the thing that’s gonna impress ’em. So you get the teen who likes to rev his engine, drive too fast, all to show what a capable and heroic adult he is. An’ all the adults he passes shake their heads an’ think, ‘What an idiot kid.’”
“Well,” I said. “That’s how I know I’m mature. I saved the whole world, and I don’t care that no one knows it. I’m not trying to impress anybody.”
The Chief nodded, gravely. “An’ I can tell how much you don’t care,” he said, “by the way you’ve mentioned it twice in the past three hours.”
I squinted at him.
“Whatever,” I said finally, backing up and squaring my body against the fence. “I’m going for it.” I looked up at the top of the fence. I could definitely jump that.
“Don’t be reckless, now.”
“It’s not a problem,” I said, shifting my weight back and forth. “I’m a superhero here.”
I dug in and leaped into a run just as a high chirp sounded and something in the sky caught my eye. It was one of those kite-shaped birds, flying overhead, flying over the fence, flying over the little dome, whereupon a big gun ratcheted up and vaporized it.
I skidded to a halt and fell over.
Inside the fence, a couple of feathers pinwheeled to the ground—they were all that was left of the bird. With a whirr, the big gun folded itself back into the top of the dome.
“Seems automatic,” said the Chief. “Probably motion activated.”
I crab-walked backward, heaving from the adrenaline and probably a little from a general lack of fitness. If I ever got home again, I swore, I was going to start doing jumping jacks or something. “Bubbles didn’t set it off,” I muttered.
“Nope.”
We were quiet a while. Bill fizzed around my head.
“Well, so...” I began, looking at the Chief. “You’re ex-military, right? What do you think I’m up against here?”
“I am not ex-military,” said the Chief, “because I’m not real. I’m just your imagination, which you can tell by the way I’m now wearing a Hawaiian shirt.”
I scowled. But he was wearing a Hawaiian shirt suddenly.
“I don’t know anything you don’t know,” the Chief concluded. “Go ahead: ask me something you don’t know.”
I looked at the dome.
“Are we...J.Lo and me...” I sighed. “What’s going to happen to us?”
The Chief smiled sadly.
“You’re gonna be okay, kid,” he said.
I frowned. “What makes you say that?”
He shrugged. “You made me say that. Suppose you must believe it.”
I breathed, and nodded.
“Okay,” I said, getting up. “Bill? Bubble-girl disguise, take two.”